The present invention resides in a double-sided adhesive and deals more particularly with an improvement in double-sided adhesive tape wherein the adhesive material is comprised of a multiplicity of pads which are readily transferrable onto a substrate or receiving surface without need of tearing the tape to effect its separation from the receiving surface.
Double-sided adhesive tape is widely used in a variety of applications, such as in mounting, laminating, or simply joining two confronting surfaces with one another. In such applications, these tapes often are comprised of two oppositely facing tacky surfaces separated from one another by the thickness of the material which constitutes it. Today, due to improvements in the adhesive technology, this thickness can be made extremely thin, for example on the order of one or two mils, without sacrificing significant adhesive capabilities. However, despite such thinness, these adhesive tapes are nevertheless relatively strong in tension. Hitherto, this tensile strength created problems when it came to detaching the applied portion of the continuous adhesive from that which had not. For example, it had been the practice to apply a continuous length of double-sided adhesive to a substrate surface using an applicator and to cause the tape remaining in the applicator to be separated from that which was applied to the surface by pulling the applicator away from this surface thus severing the adhesive along a line of tear. The force required to effect such separation often caused the substrate material, such as paper, to crumple, deform or possibly even rip. Furthermore, the line of tear along which the adhesive was separated was jagged and nonuniform. The jagged adhesive edges which remained on the substrate were undesirable in many applications since they did not define a clean adhesive break.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a tape carrying double-sided adhesive material which is capable of being readily transferred to a substrate surface in quantities thereby avoiding the need to pull the tape apart in order to detach the applied adhesive from that which remains in supply.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an adhesive material of the aforementioned type wherein the adhesive material is applied onto a substrate surface without resulting in a jagged edge being formed at its separation point.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a delivery system for readily applying quantities of adhesive material to a substrate surface without tearing a continuous length of adhesive.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and a related apparatus for conditioning a continuous length of double-sided adhesive material such that the length of material is cut transversely of its length to define a multiplicity of adhesive pads which can be separated from one another such that only a selective number of such pads may be applied to a substrate surface for a given application.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a base layer which carries quantities of adhesive material in roll form within an applicator capable of advancing the quantities of adhesive consecutively into engagement with a surface by moving the applicator and the surface relative to one another such that when such motion is stopped the adhesive quantity immediately in contact with the substrate surface is readily released from the base layer which carries it.